


by your side

by debilitas



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, First chapter is SFW, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Oral Sex, Trans Male Character, Trans Vaughn (Borderlands), Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:41:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debilitas/pseuds/debilitas
Summary: “Things are never going to be the same,” Vaughn says, unable to tear his gaze from Helios above. Feels his gut stir with anxiety, unsure if it’s a blessing or a curse.“Yeah,” Rhys agrees. “Maybe that’s not so bad.”
Relationships: Rhys/Vaughn (Borderlands)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HeliosHellion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeliosHellion/gifts).



> for bucky. gay rights!

Kneading the rough cotton of his slacks, Vaughn starts to count the scars on his hands.

One, right below the knuckle of his left thumb. Probably the oldest.

He used to have unmarred hands, accountant’s hands; untouched by the sun or sharp objects. The pads of every finger were soft to the touch, jittery from hours spent against a keyboard. 

The second is a cherry red burn on the heel of his palm. He was preparing dinner when the caravan took a sharp turn, spilling molten, questionably-sourced meat directly onto his hand.

When Rhys sits beside him, Vaughn’s first instinct is to examine his hands. They’re layered over his lap as he fidgets, picking at a hangnail. His fingers are much longer than Vaughn’s, but narrower. Slender, too fragile for Pandora.

Rhys never worked a day in his life, and it shows. The delicate skin stretched over his bones remains undamaged somehow, spared from the sunburn that stretches over his cheeks.

“Thousand miles away,” Vaughn begins, because he can’t stand the silence. He raises his chin toward Helios. “And it’s still the scariest thing in the galaxy.”

“Dude, no way,” Rhys snorts, giving him a playful shove. “We watched a guy eat soup out of a skull yesterday.”

Vaughn wants to scold him, raise an unamused brow. But when he tears his gaze away from his now unfamiliar hands, sees Rhys’ face, he softens. 

The other man’s lip twitches with the threat of a smile, eyes wide and expectant. His complexion is flushed, a solid shade of pink stretching from cheek to cheek. 

Pandora’s sun is relentless, scalding his sensitive skin like it’s got a grudge. Maybe it does.

Vaughn smiles up at him, then feels his expression fall. Out of the corner of an eye he sees Helios, static and unyielding. Staring the two of them down— judging. Condemning.

“Things are never going to be the same,” Vaughn says, unable to tear his gaze from Helios above. Feels his gut stir with anxiety, unsure if it’s a blessing or a curse.

They could be comfortable right now. At the very bottom of the corporate ladder maybe, but at the bottom with real beds. Hot meals and overpriced clothes and air conditioning. Never worrying if they’ll wake up in the middle of the night to an axe at their throats.

Hyperion is much more covert about the whole _murder_ thing. Assassinations are a secret affair, shared only through the quietest of whispers and subtle shifts in facial features. Less messy than Pandoran politics, but it bred paranoia. 

Vaughn can’t remember a time where he wasn’t looking over his shoulder, reading into a friend’s tone, just to be sure the potato salad they were offering him wasn’t poisoned. 

What a way to go: death by starch and mayonnaise. If Pandora does kill him, it’ll be in much a cooler way, at least.

“Yeah,” Rhys agrees. 

There’s something in his tone that Vaughn doesn’t recognize; gentler, and uncharacteristically honest. 

Rhys spent just as much time on Helios, leaving him with the inability to bare his throat to anyone. Even in moments like these, when it’s just the two of them, he has the instinct to bob and weave around vulnerability. 

“Maybe that’s not so bad.”

The hold on Vaughn’s arm changes, too. Transitions from playful to serious, squeezes the muscle through the stained fabric of his shirt. It’s enough to redirect his attention, and it’s no longer Helios’ gaze he finds himself under.

Vaughn swallows. “Yeah.”

Rhys bows his head, seems to consider something, then presses his lips to Vaughn’s. 

He freezes, every muscle tensing like he'd been struck. Eyes wide, glasses creeping down the bridge of his nose, he watches Rhys. Searches his expression, and finds nothing. No answers, no reprieve, but no deceit, either.

For the first time in a long time, Rhys is being completely honest. 

Then it’s over, and Rhys pulls away. Cups the side of his Vaughn’s face, eyes darting back and forth as he searches his best friend’s features. Vaughn doesn't know what he's looking for.

It wasn't a particularly good kiss- too chaste, too unsure. After years of companionship, slotting together until they were seen more as a unit than individuals, they've found the one activity that doesn't come easy. Vaughn, too shocked to move, and Rhys' lips, more chapped than he'd ever imagined, hurriedly layered over his own. 

Seriously, though. Rhys' mouth is _dry_. Like kissing desert terrain, or a well-loved sandbox. 

It's not how he imagined it would be. It's still the best kiss he's ever had. And he wants another, again and again — forever — until Pandora kills them.

Vaughn’s not sure who moves first. Thinks it’s possible that they both did, at different speeds, at the same time. They crash into one another, and it’s a head on collision. Vaughn's body folds in on itself, and he pictures himself hitting the asphalt, imagines the sound of bone against concrete.

Their lips slot together, still unfamiliar, but confident. Eager fingers thread through Vaughn’s cropped hair and _pull_ , beckoning him closer. His limbs are too heavy; uncoordinated and battered from the impact for him to protest. 

He falls into Rhys, grabbing blindly at his form. Finds purchase on clothed shoulders, digs his fingertips into the collage of hexagons, thumbs resting on the column of his throat. Kisses back, hurried and desperate, like he's drowning, and Rhys is the only breath of real air.

Maybe he is: Vaughn never was a particularly strong swimmer.

Rhys' hands, just as hungry as his own, are lost in his hair. Knotting in the short strands that have already lightened from the unforgiving sun, blunt fingernails pressing into his scalp. They used to be manicured, an even length and impeccable. Vaughn prefers them like this.

He _likes_ the mess Rhys' hair has become, formerly flawless complexion ruddy and marred with imperfections. There's a scratch, probably from some of Pandora's sharp foliage, just above his brow, and bags under tired eyes. He hasn't been sleeping- neither of them have. 

Sleep deprivation; that's what this is. Two men pushed to their limits and finally snapping under the pressure, desperate for any relief.

It's a lie. Vaughn felt the weight on his shoulders long before they left Helios, and knew it well. Became acquainted with its mass back in college, when Rhys first smiled at him from the opposite side of a desk. A quick flash of ivory-colored teeth, too wide to be on the front of any magazine, but the most beautiful thing Vaughn had ever seen.

They have to separate, gasping hoarsely as they try to catch whatever breath they can. Still holding each other impossibly close, noses crushed together, sharing the same humid air. There's a familiar twinge in Vaughn's gut when they lock eyes, nervous and insecure.

_Don't stop_ , he wants to say. _Don't leave._ Because he couldn't bear to go back to any time before this. Before he knew the feel of Rhys' lips on his own, fingers tangled in his hair, beckoning him impossibly close. Anything up to this point feels like wasted time, like filler in his unbearably mundane life.

He used to wonder how anyone could get lost on Pandora. But not anymore.

"Sorry," Rhys says, not sounding the least bit apologetic.

"Don't be," Vaughn breathes, fingertips scrubbing the back of Rhys' neck. Looks up at him, mirrors the content grin that stretches across his best friend's face.

Things are never going to be the same.


	2. Chapter 2

As Vaughn tries and fails to find purchase in the rock behind him, he decides he should’ve paid more attention in geology class. Just to be sure the sediment under his fingernails is harmless, and won’t be impossible to remove later.

Face and lips still burning from the kiss, Vaughn collides with the warm rock, feeling something jagged press into his lower back. The discomfort is quickly overridden by Rhys’ hands on him— everywhere. Touching and petting wherever they can reach, feeling up the sides of his torso, making him squirm when they graze over his ribs.

Rhys moves like a man possessed, taking ragged inhales as he fumbles with the buttons of Vaughn’s shirt, pupils blown. Well, only one pupil, technically. It’s just as effective. 

“Shit, dude,” Rhys says when the final button is popped loose. His right hand is frigid against Vaughn’s skin, while the other is warm and soft. “When’d you get so hot?”

Vaughn feels his cheeks burn, and shrugs. “You’re just horn— _oh_.”

Rhys suddenly cups his chest in his left hand, and licks a stripe along the flushed skin. Leaves a trail of open mouthed kisses across Vaughn’s heaving sternum, sucking a rosy mark above the hammering heart.

Vaughn cups the back of the other man’s head as he works, watching in a stunned silence as the love bites bloom across his skin. Swallows hard when Rhys’ mouth moves lower, kissing the defined lines of his abdomen, ghosting over the curls peeking over his waistband.

They speak at the same time.

“You don’t have to—“

“Can I—“

They share breathless laughter, and the tension melts. Vaughn’s excited pulse is no longer plagued by anxiety, and the churning in his belly reduces. Rhys is his best friend: he has no reason to be nervous.

“Yeah,” he says, running his fingers through Rhys’ hair, pulling any remaining gel out of it. “Please.”

It’s a mere glimpse, only lasting seconds, but Rhys flashes that smile. The same one Vaughn fell in love with so many years ago, wide and crooked.

Rhys tugs at Vaughn’s pants with eager hands, getting them down to his knees before he grows too impatient. Throws Vaughn’s legs over his shoulders and gets between them, grip anchoring on strong thighs.

There’s a sharp pang of want in Vaughn’s gut at the sight of Rhys between his legs, looking up at him. It quickly upgrades to _need_ when a hot mouth finds his dick, clever tongue probing the sensitive flesh.

Vaughn makes a noise that dies somewhere in his throat, and clamps a hand over his mouth, mindful of the camp nearby. He’s trapped between the mountain behind him and Rhys, spine flush against rock and knees raised high. There’s no place he’d rather be.

Rhys’ mouth is hot and desperate, alternating between sucking on Vaughn’s flushed dick and teasing his entrance with his tongue. It slips inside with no resistance and he casts an inquisitive glance upward. Vaughn nods. It presses further inside him, wet and velvety, then is replaced by a slender finger.

He can’t bite back the needy moan that comes out of his open mouth. Runs a hand through messy hair, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, slack jawed. Watches, enthralled, as Rhys adds another finger, pumping in and out, scissoring him open. 

He whines Rhys’ name, threading both hands through tousled hair, pulling it slightly. Uses the wavy strands to readjust his head, giving a better view of a flushed face, lids hooded and lustful.

Then Rhys is standing again, still working him open, capturing parted lips with his own. Vaughn takes the lead this time, and Rhys is all too happy to give it to him. The kiss is all teeth and smiles, both exhilarated beyond repair.

If Vaughn could go back in time, he’d go back just to tell his younger self that his feelings are, in fact, reciprocated. That countless nights jerking off in a dorm, wishing it were Rhys’ hand instead, wouldn't last forever. 

—And don’t get frosted tips, even though everyone else is. Just don’t.

“I thought,” Rhys pants against the side of Vaughn’s mouth when he goes for his belt. “I’d never get to— we’d never…”

He lets the sentence hang. Vaughn unbuckles a very overpriced belt, and meets his gaze. There’s adoration in Rhys’ eyes, shining with bewilderment and the threat of tears.

“Dude, don’t get all soft,” Vaughn chides, tone gentle. “Just fuck me.”

That crooked smile again. “Yessir.”

Then it’s hurried again, fast and eager, both of them touching whatever skin they can. Vaughn slipping a hand through Rhys’ open fly, cupping his erection, and being pressed further into the rock in response.

He helps work the other man’s pants down his narrow hips, positioning the waistband of his underwear beneath his cock. It hangs hard and heavy in the night air, head flushed a furious shade of red and dripping precome.

It’s not a particularly show-stopping dick; average length, cut, with dark curls at the base. Curves a bit to the right. Vaughn’s never wanted anything more in his life, and feels his own dick twitch with interest.

The way Rhys attempts to line himself up reeks of inexperience, fingers unsteady and hesitant. Guides the weeping tip along the length of Vaughn’s dick, making them both shiver.

He misses a few times; angles himself a bit too high or slips out of place due to Vaughn’s arousal.

Then he’s _inside_ , and it’s good. Vaughn thinks so, at least. He’s entirely too consumed by Rhys’ reaction, watching brows knit together, pupil blown, eyes locked on Vaughn’s. Mouth agape, he wears a mask of pure shock and bliss.

All because of Vaughn. He feels his cheeks burn. 

It becomes a flurry of motions then; a mess of hands, hips pistoning, skin against skin. Vaughn’s strong legs tighten around Rhys’ waist, holding him impossibly close. His body is jostled with every movement, and he hears the shift of rock against rock as he moves along the mountain at his back. They alternate between hurried, messy kisses and panting into one another’s mouths, unwilling or unable to break eye contact.

Neither of them last long, too thrilled to finally be touching one another for any real technique or finesse.

Rhys comes first, with a stutter in his thrusts, before sheathing himself fully inside. Squeezes the backs of Vaughn’s thighs and whimpers his name, lids drifting shut. 

Vaughn follows him, with nimble fingers on his dick and a few lazy strokes within. Chokes on the very air he’s breathing, and shields his face in the crook of Rhys’ neck. 

The hand on his lower back is gentle, and so is the press of lips to his sweat slick temple. 

Things are never going to be the same, he thinks again, casting a cursory glance toward Helios.


End file.
